Blame!

Nihongo|Chief Scientist Cibo|シボ主任科学者|Cibo Shuninkagakusha is the head scientist of the Capitol corporation. She tries to access the Net Sphere with an artificially created version of Net Terminal Genes; the experiment fails with disastrous results and summons the Safeguard, leading to the destruction of the entire facility.

During their journey, Cibo undergoes many changes of bodily form, emphasizing the transhuman nature of life in the Megastructure. Cibo cracks security systems and gathers information to help her and Killy's journey. She speaks rather more than the taciturn Killy, often serving to advance the plot.

Later in the series, Cibo is hybridized with a Safeguard entity, and creates an artifact called "the Core". The Core's purpose and abilities are not described in the story, but it appears to be the key to finding the Net Terminal Genes.

;SanakanA high level agent of the Safeguard who first appears as a short, young girl with black hair. She appears to have a particular interest in wiping out the human tribe of Electro-Fishers, and seems to know Killy from the past. Sanakan uses a GBE similar to Killy's (sometimes hand-held, sometimes an integral part of her body.)

Sanakan has 3 forms. First is a child form, which is used to infiltrate human settlements and later destroy them. The second one is the Safeguard form. Her third form is a humanoid woman. According to the manga, the Safeguard form of Sanakan does not hold her conciousness, but is only a remote body controlled by the main Safeguard system; Cibo uses this fact to temporarily disable Sanakan and a number of Safeguard units by hacking into their control system.

At first Sanakan is an antagonist; later in the story, she is given a new mission is to protect Cibo and the Core. During one battle she is killed by the Silicon Creatures; her leader warns her that if she goes back to base reality with a Safeguard form (with her conciousness permanently installed) and she is killed again, they can't revive her again. Sanakan agrees to this condition and rescues Cibo from the Silicon Creatures, but is later killed when she tries to protect Killy from a Level 9 Safeguard.

Setting

The City is actually a structure that began on Earth. The mechanical beings known as Builders, which move around reforming and creating new landscapes, appear to have begun building without end, creating an enormous structure with little internal logic or coherence. There exists some kind of major isolation system between the gargantuan floors of The City. Between them, there are entire layers of an unknown, nearly-indestructible material called "the megastructure". Attempts to approach the megastructure result in a massive safeguard response so as to prevent trespassing. Bypassing the safeguard is pointless, as it is nearly impossible to even scratch the megastructure. Only a direct Gravitational Beam Emitter blast is known to have been capable of digging a hole into a megastructure.

The City, and the Builders, were controlled by the Netsphere and the Authority but they have since lost the power to control the expansion of The City due to the chaotic and insecure manner of its growth. Without intervention by a user with Net Terminal Genes they cannot reestablish control over The City nor the Safeguards, whose original job was to eliminate any humans who try to access the Netsphere without Net Terminal Genes. The Safeguard now attempts to destroy "all" humans without the Net Terminal Gene as the degradation of The City has corrupted their true goals.

It has been suggested by Tsutomu Nihei himself in his artbook "Blame! And So On" that The City is actually a growing Dyson sphere of gargantuan proportions. Its spherical circumference is speculated to be roughly the size of Jupiter's planetary orbit (32.675 AU) [cite web|url=http://www.randomisgod.com/blame/82.html|title=Translation from the "Blame!" artbook|accessdate=2008-03-15] . No evidence contradicts this speculation, and the prequel to "Blame!", "NOiSE", even states that the structure has passed the orbit of the moon. In the last chapter of NOiSE, it is stated "At one point even the moon which used to be up in the sky above, was integrated into The City's structure". In Volume 9, a room is even revealed to have a diameter roughly the size of Jupiter itself, reinforcing the speculation on the sheer size of the Megastructure.

Publication

The original Japanese manga was collected into 10 volumes (tankōbon) by Kodansha's "Afternoon KC" division.

* "Blame! #01" (1998/06) ISBN 4-06-314182-9
* "Blame! #02" (1998/12) ISBN 4-06-314194-2
* "Blame! #03" (1999/08) ISBN 4-06-314218-3
* "Blame! #04" (2000/03) ISBN 4-06-314235-3
* "Blame! #05" (2000/09) ISBN 4-06-314251-5
* "Blame! #06" (2001/03) ISBN 4-06-314263-9
* "Blame! #07" (2001/10) ISBN 4-06-314277-9
* "Blame! #08" (2002/04) ISBN 4-06-314289-2
* "Blame! #09" (2002/12) ISBN 4-06-314310-4
* "Blame! #10" (2003/09) ISBN 4-06-314328-7

In February 2005, Tokyopop announced that it has licensed Blame! for U.S. distribution, with publication beginning in August 2005.

In 2006 the Tokyopop distribution was nominated for a Harvey Award in the category 'Best American Edition of Foreign Material'. [cite web|url=http://harveyawards.org/awards_2006nom.html|title=The Harvey Awards 2006 nominees and winners|publisher=harveyawards.org|accessdate=2008-03-15]
* "Blame! #01" (2005/08) ISBN 1-59532-834-3
* "Blame! #02" (2005/11) ISBN 1-59532-835-1
* "Blame! #03" (2006/02) ISBN 1-59532-836-X
* "Blame! #04" (2006/05) ISBN 1-59532-837-8
* "Blame! #05" (2006/07) ISBN 1-59532-838-6
* "Blame! #06" (2006/11) ISBN 1-59532-839-4
* "Blame! #07" (2007/02) ISBN 1-59532-840-8
* "Blame! #08" (2007/05) ISBN 1-59532-841-6
* "Blame! #09" (2007/08) ISBN 1-59532-842-4
* "Blame! #10" (2007/11) ISBN 1-59532-843-2

References

External links

* [http://www.tokyopop.com/S-1414/ TOKYOPOP's Blame! page]
* [http://netlabyrinth.net/ NetLabyrinth.net]
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